Proposed Topics for Future Meetings

Suggested Topics for Future Meetings

· Emma and Elizabeth: Opposite or Alike?

readers whereas Emma comes off as arrogant and meddling. But are they really that different? Could you
not apply the title “Pride and Prejudice” equally to the tale of “Emma”?)

· The Jane Austen/Charlotte Bronte ‘Smackdown’ (I stole this title from an article. It is intended to be a

debate. One person would make the case for Austen being a better writer than Bronte and the other
would take the opposite position. Remembering that a debate is just for fun. Clearly both authors are
great and well-loved. But...Charlotte Bronte said of Austen:

“Anything like warmth or enthusiasm, anything energetic, poignant, heartfelt, is utterly out of place in commending these works: all such demonstrations the authoress would have met with a well-bred sneer, would have calmly scorned as outré or extravagant. She does her business of delineating the surface of the lives of genteel English people curiously well. There is a Chinese fidelity, a miniature delicacy, in the painting. She ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him with nothing profound. The passions are perfectly unknown to her: she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that stormy sisterhood ... What sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves flexibly, it suits her to study: but what throbs fast and full, though hidden, what the blood rushes through, what is the unseen seat of life and the sentient target of death--this Miss Austen ignores....Jane Austen was a complete and most sensible lady, but a very incomplete and rather insensible (not senseless woman), if this is heresy--I cannot help it.”

· The Bank Restriction Act of 1797 and Its Impact on Wealthy Families

. Jane Austen's Predecessors & How Their Works Affected Hers (i.e. Edgeworth, Burney, Ichbold)